Interface; Puerto Rico Libre

If you start with the basics you would have to say that the main problem is within a colony relationship is that in which we as a people do not have the powers to formulate a policy, a public policy which will take into account our own autonomous aspirations. Laws that command our everyday life in Puerto Rico are made by a foreign parliament, the parliament of the United States, the United States, Congress. These are the same type of colonialism they had in the United States in 1775. In the 16th century said the Puerto Ricans were trained to be afraid of the English pirate. In the 17th century to be afraid of the Dutch

Marauder. In the 18th century and the 19th century to be afraid of the new popular democratic ideas coming out of the American Revolution and in the 20th century to be afraid of the ideas of communism coming out of Cuba. I really came here out of curiosity because at that time the land rescue movement was very very big in Puerto Rico and a lot of propaganda was being given to it and I wanted to know I wanted to go to one to see what it was like. Four points of view. Not the same but similar. Each dealing with an aspect of the concept of independence for the island of Puerto Rico. I'm Tony Baton. We try to make this program reflect the way we see the world a mix of cultures and

interface. On this edition of our program we thought we take a look at the status of the independence movement in Puerto Rico. So we went there and talked to an assortment of people. One of them was a young woman you just saw. Raquel is a Puerto Rican. She's born on the island, taken as a child in New York city and has now returned to Puerto Rico searching for her roots. She lives in Via Margarita, a settlement of squatters just outside San Juan. Our report begins there. Paco!

Paco! Come here! You want to read it? Hello! Do you sleep well? Yes. Let's see if we can get up. How are you? Good. Good. So I don't like that you get up with an assortment. Like that, right? Get up. Get up. Get up, get up. Get up, get up. Yes, but wait. You're going to school today? No, you stay here. We're going to do something real quick. Okay, don't get so bad. Let's get up, get up. I lived in the United States and I started getting involved with anti-poverty programs. I got very heavily involved with the black consciousness movement.

And I realized when I got involved with that, that I was asked, are you black? Are you white? Are you black? Are you white? And I started realizing that I was Puerto Rican and what that meant. When I started trying to find out what that meant, I realized that I had to come back here to my roots to know about me as I was learning about my people. And so I did. I came back to Puerto Rico. Madonna. Yeah? Coming here, there was no water. We had to bring water from my in-laws home. There was no money to pay workers. We had to do this on arm, which is very interesting because most of the people here have learned carpentry, have learned electricity, have learned plumbing because they've had to because of necessity. The government says that they're going to give us this land or sell it to us very cheaply.

That's up in the air right now. Nothing is really happening with it. What they are doing is, if you've noticed, the electricity agency has been working here for the last six months to put in electricity officially with the meter. The mythology of a society is often grounded in superficial realities. Puerto Rico is, in many respects, a sultry island paradise. American tourists find when they come down to this part of the West Indian Antilles, much of what they expected to find. Pretty ladies, good beaches, some high-priced hotels. The Taino Indians called it Borancan. Now, indelibly stamped with a Spanish language and culture. The tropical atmosphere of the island hardly masks some of the glaring social problems of today's third world societies. Modern building developments and ribbons of highways notwithstanding.

Puerto Rico exhibits much of what is negative in what we have come to know as colonies caught in the bind of economic, political and social imperialism imposed by a dominant mother country. In this case, the United States. We have an economy, for example, that is highly dependent upon the U.S. economy. We are what you might call a captive market. We consume over 90% of what we consume comes from the United States. And because of the custom barriers, because of the maritime laws, because of all the juridical relationship with the States, it is not possible for us to break that dependency. Now, that dependency means that right now, for example, we are in the midst of an inflation. And when you have a colony like Puerto Rico, whenever the prices go up in the States, it goes up more here. Why? Because, for example, we are an overseas colony.

And all our goods have to be transported. And when the price rises in a product in Wisconsin, and the price of its transportation to the New York market also rises, then you have to add to that cost the rise in the overseas transportation of coming to Puerto Rico. Critics of Puerto Rico's current political identity as a colony of the United States are confronted daily by realities which support their call for a change. Although most Puerto Ricans are poor by American standards, many islanders spend hard and exhibit the kind of conspicuous consumption accelerated by the tens of thousands of American manufactured goods that are imported daily from the United States. Critics of the Puerto Rican economic and political relationship to the United States also say that because America controls the resources of Puerto Rican society, the United States is able to impose conceptions of the good life, which best coincide with American interests and not Puerto Rican.

The colonial situation in Puerto Rico gives rise and it was created for that purpose in 1898 to economic imperialism by large United States investors in Puerto Rico. For example, last year, the American companies in Puerto Rico paying very, very low wages, which they could never pay in the United States, took out from Puerto Rico, reported earnings of $762 million. That happens at the same time that we have around 30% unemployment in Puerto Rico when we have vast, squalid loans all around the island. And when practically Puerto Rico is a world champion in drug addiction and in mental sickness. Even a quick glance by a tourist reveals the kinds of inequities that critics of the present Puerto Rican system say exist on the island. Trademarks of big business American stylists scattered along the highways leading to San Juan,

corporate giants stagger the skyline with their monuments. Off the highways are the corrugated shanty towns built up on the remains of tin can fill in, all that's left of the mainland presence. Professor Jose Villameal is director of the School of Planning at the University of Puerto Rico. He's one of the leading authorities on the economic state of Puerto Rico's colonial relationship with America. We asked Professor Villameal about the millions of dollars spent annually by the United States in aid to Puerto Rico. Much of that money has been spent on welfare payments, which don't really result in the long run condition of the people. It maintains them on a subsistence level. It keeps the tensions down, but it's not a long run solution. And what you have in Puerto Rico, for example, now with the food coupons, is you'll have a massive inflow of money, which will probably affect 60% of the population. But that will not really result in the long run problem.

So unemployment, under employment, low incomes, a skill distribution of income and so on. Let's assume that Puerto Rico suddenly became independent. Would it be possible for the island to support itself? It seems to me that independence is viable. Not only is it viable, I think, in the long run, it's necessary in order to be able to develop a rational and humane society. The population of the island is about 2.5 million people, most of whom are poor. At any given moment, those who may be employed, those that constitute a constant working class, number between 400 and 800,000 people. This is Pedro Grant, president of the United Workers Movement, a union organization representing around 150,000 workers in over 50 unions. Suppose Puerto Rico were independent, with the conditions of the workers' change, then, would it be better or worse for them?

Puerto Rico was independent. We, Puerto Rico, would have absolutely control over economy and politics. And for example, it wouldn't happen what was happening now, where in 1974, the Americans won a rich income, 1300 million dollars of money that was brought to Puerto Rico. If Puerto Rico was independent, that money would be left to the Puerto Rico. We, Puerto Rico, would be able to plan the economy of the country based on the needs of Puerto Rico, and not as it is now that it is planned in base to benefit the North American corporations. Sen. Grant, if Puerto Rico were to become independent, would it be better for the island to be independent under a system of free enterprise or a system of socialism? Definitely, if Puerto Rico were an independent nation, the most that would convince the people, especially the worker class, is that it was a socialist society. Because in a socialist society,

everyone works for the good, like no one works for any other person. For example, in a socialist society, education would be free and free for all communities, especially for workers. The health would be completely free. The rent would be free. It would not be the payment of taxes on the property, or on the salaries. All the economy would be free for benefit of Puerto Rico's people, and not for benefit of a few, as it is happening now in the current situation. That is also the problem of criminality, the problem of drugs, which is a serious problem with which we suffer. In this capitalist system. In Ponce, one of the island's largest cities, we came across this example of how strikes are often suppressed in Puerto Rico. These workers are demanding better working conditions and higher wages at a cement factory. We were told that strikes by Puerto Rican workers

are often suppressed by the police. The quest toward Puerto Rican independence has occasionally turned toward violence, like this attack on Blair House and the United States Senate in Washington in the early 1950s. Recently, there have been bombings in New York City, but Puerto Rican militants like Juan Maribras, leader of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, distinguish between the use of armed struggle for defensive purposes from random terror tactics such as the recent New York City bombings. We believe that armed struggle is an inalienable ride of all people struggling for national liberation and independence,

and eventually it comes in necessity when the imperialist power tries to suppress the expression of the people. That's why we affirm in the thesis of our party the necessity of preparing ourselves for the eventuality of armed struggle. However, we are not favoring this kind of indiscriminate and isolated terrorism that took place, for instance, in Wall Street recently. It is completely foreign to the tactics of a revolutionary movement to attack innocent people and people that are to be considered as potential allies of our cause.

The American people's associates are not our enemies. Our only enemies are the small minority of capitalist interest that exploit our country. I think the welfare payments have a function as maintainers of the system. They keep the social tensions down to a point where people can subsist in a stage which does not move them to, let's say, open revolt. The point is that we've created a type of society in which a very high proportion of the investment is done by outside firms in which foreign investors own most of industry and which is really at the mercy of what goes on in the United States. Senator Ruben Barrios is a member of the Puerto Rican legislature

and the Puerto Rican Independence Party. Barrios feels that the major reason for independence is to solve the island's economic problems. If the United States government gives $1 with the other hand, it takes away $10 to the United States company which it defends in Puerto Rico. This is a mere business enterprise for American companies. The American companies and the United States government wouldn't be here if it would be to their convenience. Nobody has ever argued that American interest or American control or for that matter the control of one nation by another in anywhere in the world is for the benefit of the colonized nation. That's the most absurd myth that was ever, ever developed in the whole Caribbean area. Most of the government paternalism has been directed towards the slum dwellers in Puerto Rico. I mean food coupons, I mean all sorts of very small things for the rest of the community but very big things for people who live in Islam like giving light to the houses one week before election.

You should know if anybody is able to identify right here. And these sectors to a large degree have been influenced in Puerto Rico by this type of government paternalism, both federal and the Puerto Rican government through the federal system. To get some sense of how an outside observer sees the problems of Puerto Rico we talked with Gordon Lewis, a historian whose book, Puerto Rico Freedom and Power in the Caribbean is the most authoritative history of the island. Professor Lewis sees the development of a national independence in Puerto Rico as a hopeful cause for the future.

But Lewis has some reservations. The new independent eastern movement in Puerto Rico in the last few years has been radically transformed ideologically. Its leading component now is Marxism-Leninism. As a Marxist myself, I accept the two cardinal postulates of Marxism as applied to the Puerto Rican condition. One, that the motor force of change for independence must be the organized working class and two, that in the long run that can only be resolved by armed revolution. The American record in the Caribbean, including the Santa Domingo intervention of 1965, means as I read the record that the United States rule in class will not accept an independent Puerto Rico that is Marxist-Leninist in its character. Having said that much, at the same time, I am a Caribbeanist. And since Marxism grew up in 19th century industrial England,

there are a number of aspects of Caribbean life that, necessarily, it did not examine. What are those? In the first place, Marx was the arch-priest of industrial technology. That has meant in the Caribbean a disastrous neglect of agriculture. I do not see why we could not have a viable rice production agricultural sector in Puerto Rico. Therefore, I want to see a new balance between the life of the urban town and the life of the countryside. In the second place, Marx never dealt in any way with the problem of racism. Caribbean society is overwhelmingly racially and culturally mixed society. Here in Puerto Rico, there is a mythology shared by most Puerto Ricans that there is no race prejudice in Puerto Rico.

Therefore, there is. And Isabellito is a non-cruse. A black scholar has recently written an ex-poisee of race prejudice that is shared by many Puerto Ricans, including many independentists, men, and women. The third problem ignored by Marx is that mainly of the woman question. Puerto Rico, psychologically, is still a society poised by the evil of machismo. And you will find that there are, again, many independentistists who suffer from that disease. Although many of them have been cured of it, by the encounter with the returning Puerto Rican who was lived in the black ghettos of the northern industrial cities. Now, if we were to put the leadership of the Puerto Rican revolution into the hands of the racista and of the macho,

whether they are independentists or not, from my viewpoint, that would be tantamount to put in count Dracula in charge of the blood bank. I don't want to speculate into the future, but we have to be honest just by looking at the past. And when we conceive of the possibilities which we have as a people, and when we see the limitations which we have in fulfilling those aspirations, it's very difficult for us to be passive. I don't underestimate the material objective conditions, but I don't underestimate either the ideological fight. And I think that what the last 100 years in the whole world has taught us is that maybe some people living in the utmost poverty, depending on government-doll, will never stand up and fight. But people who are oppressed, who are working, who are on the virtue of society, but seeing that something better can be obtained,

can, through that ideological process, go and fight for the liberty, go and fight for the equality. I think we're going to stay here, definitely. There's no doubt in my mind asked to that. We're definitely going to stay here, and it's going to be a community for a long time, but it's not going to be what we thought was going to happen here at the beginning. It's going to be just another community, in any other area of Puerto Rico. An island awakening, an independent Puerto Rico. Independence or a continued existence is a commonwealth, a colony. We'll be watching further developments on the Puerto Rican Independence question both here at home and on the island. This has been another edition of Interface. I'm Tony Baton. See you. And if you don't mind, don't complain, because it's quite quiet.

Another control is a nation. You